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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192601">Looking Back</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BradburyTheQueen/pseuds/BradburyTheQueen'>BradburyTheQueen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>American Sign Language, Deaf Character, Deaf Reader, Friendship, Gen, Gender-neutral Reader, Memory Loss, No Smut, No Spoilers, Pidgin Signed English, Reader is voice off, Vague</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:02:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,411</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27192601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BradburyTheQueen/pseuds/BradburyTheQueen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The reader is kidnapped and they have no idea how or why, but they have to put the pieces together in order to finish the hunt.</p><p>Reader is Deaf with voice off and has been friends with the Winchesters for years.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Looking Back</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hearing author with years of Deaf culture and language work under their belt. Any feedback would be appreciated.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I was going on a hunt. Shit. Everything is a bit garbled in my brain. I can’t remember what happened. Looking around the room, it is too dark to see anything other than a small amount of light leaking through the bottom of the door at the top of what must be stairs. I can’t move from where I’m sitting. My legs are pinned in place to the legs and my wrists bound to the arms of the chair. The room is damp and has no windows that I can see. My neck is stiff from being in the same position for so long and it aches as I check my surroundings. I am so screwed. I try to turn my wrist to look at my watch, but I can’t press the button to illuminate the time, so it’s useless.</p><p>Beyond not knowing where I am, how much time has passed, and whether or not the boys even know I’m missing yet, I know I am well past trouble. This was supposed to just be a simple hunt. Things are never what they seem, I guess. I can only remember up to driving into town. Everything else feels hazy.</p><p>I pray to Castiel. Hell, I call out to Crowley inside my head. Whoever will show up and help me out, I’ll take it. I consider yelling, but maybe it’s better just to bide my time and hope that they’ll think I’m still out, whoever “they” are.</p><p>I keep an eye on the door at the top of the stairs and keep praying that someone will show up to set me free. Even if someone or something comes in, I’m probably shit out of luck. The chances of my captors knowing sign language is slim to none.</p><p>Minutes or hours go by. It’s hard to tell in the dark. There doesn’t appear to be any movement up the stairs and nobody comes in to check. My wrists are raw from trying to finagle and pick at the rope around my wrists. My knife isn’t in the holster on my waist and I can feel that the one I normally keep around my ankle is gone too. If only it were handcuffs, I’d be golden, but bobby pins do nothing to the rope. I frequently look up at the door as I try to pick apart the rope to make sure nobody is coming.</p><p>Eventually, a shadow moves across the bottom of the door and I hold my breath. The shadow is moving quickly back and forth in some erratic movement. Then the light goes out. Now it’s nearly pitch black down here. With the loss of the only light I can see, the panic begins to rise. My chest is rising and falling quickly as I start taking fast, shallow breaths. I’m trying to do the thing where you blow the air out like you’re blowing out a candle and count in my head, but I’m not sure how much it’s helping. I’m trying my best to break free of the chair, screw how much noise I make, now.</p><p>Then a flashlight light appears in the doorway before the basement is flooded with light. My eyes clamp shut from the sudden sensory input and as soon as I can bear it, I glance at the stairs to see who’s coming.</p><p>Thank, God. It’s Sam. His lumbering frame is rushing down the steps as he runs towards me. He makes quick work of the bindings on my wrists and helps me release my legs. He’s on high alert and his head is on a swivel. He passes me my gun.</p><p>“How did you find me?” I signed once he took a second to make eye contact.</p><p>He looked a little confused at the comment and said, “You were on a video call with us, about to tell us about the case when…” He was about to say more when he swivelled around towards the stairs and pointed his gun towards the doorway, to which I followed suit. A second later Dean appeared and we all lowered our guns. Dean waved us up the stairs and led us out of the house.</p><p>We made our way to the Impala and high tailed it out of there. Once Baby hit the road, Sam turned around from the front seat and sim-commed, “What happened?”</p><p>“I don’t know. You probably know more than me. I can’t remember a thing. The last thing I remember was driving into Wichita. I don’t even know who or what took me.”</p><p>“Well, you said something was wrong and then you passed out on our call. We came as fast as we could. We tracked your phone to the house.” He reached into his pocket and handed it over the seat before continuing, “It was a small coven of witches. We killed two in the house and there may be more. Do you have any idea why they would have taken you?”</p><p>“No.” I shook my head and tried to remember. Maybe I went for a salt and burn and they got me while I was digging? It’s always hard to tell if someone is sneaking up when you’re six feet down in a hole. Maybe I fought somebody and fell or got hit in the head? I felt around my scalp, but there weren’t any sore spots, so I wasn’t knocked out from a physical blow. At least the memory loss wasn’t from a concussion. I checked my body for any signs of an injection, but there wasn’t anything anywhere I could see while sitting in the back seat of a car driving down the interstate at night. Maybe a hex bag? I always check my room for them, but maybe I missed something.</p><p>I felt my pockets, but when I came up empty, I looked up at Sam who was watching me process everything. “I can’t remember anything about this hunt at all. Do you have any idea where I was staying? If I can find my laptop, maybe we can fit some pieces together.”</p><p>Sam nodded and pulled out his own phone. He did some Googling and then told Dean where to go. Sam had called four different motels before he found the one I had been staying at and fortunately, my car was right there in the parking lot by the room I had apparently been staying in. We got the spare key from the office and went inside the room. We checked everywhere, but there were no signs of any hex bags, but they could've taken it with them if this is where they got me.</p><p>This whole thing was bizarre, even for us. We looked through my laptop and discovered that I had been hunting a small amateur coven of three witches who were killing men in the town in some strange ways, but they were also some women who had gone missing in the town over the past few months, not to mention a rise in missing pets. We went through a bunch of files that I had pulled up on the computer, but nothing really put all of the pieces together as to how or why I ended up in that basement and where the other witch went, but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t take long for them to find out about me and their two dead covenmates.</p><p>Suddenly, my head was spinning. The harder I tried to remember and stay conscious, the worse it got. It was like deja vu while it was all slipping away again. Whatever was happening wasn’t affecting the boys, and I tried to get their attention as I fought to stay awake. “Something’s wrong.” My whole body felt heavy and it was like moving against the current as I fought to sign each word to the boys. “Find the hex bag.” They frantically searched the room again, as we must have missed something. Then Dean ran out of the room towards my car, which we hadn’t thought to check. My head drooped to the table as I struggled to keep my eyes open as my memories were slipping away again. I saw Dean trying to ignite his lighter, but I passed out before he could burn the bag.</p><p>I woke up lying on the motel bed with Sam sitting guard by the bed and Dean standing by the door, both white knuckling their guns with worry.</p><p>I sat up, very confused and asked, “What are you guys doing here? What happened?”</p><p>They put their guns away so they could communicate with me. Dean looked frustrated with himself. “Shit.” Dean signed. Trust Dean to know the curse words. He fingerspelled, “hex,” and then made a gesture which I could only assume meant, “bag.” He clumsily signed, “I burned it, but too slow.”</p><p>Sam signed, “What do you remember?”</p><p>“I last remember driving to Wichita for a hunt, but I don’t remember what I was going to hunt.”</p><p>“Okay, so the hex bag was like a reset button. It erased whatever memories you made after you came into town and made you forget the hunt. It also knocked you out for about an hour. We couldn’t wake you up. We figured we just had to let it run its course since you woke up last time.” Sam spoke, but signed any words he knew to help me catch his meaning, which thankfully was most of it.</p><p>“Last time?”</p><p>“Yeah, you came into town on a witch hunt and they must have pegged you as a hunter because they planted the hex bag in the wheel of your car. Since you parked right by your room, it was close enough to work and caused you to lose your memory and pass out. You were briefing us on the case when they kidnapped you and we got you back. We found where you had been staying and, now, here we are. Round 3.” Sam gestured a lot to help fill in the blanks for the signs he didn’t know.</p><p>“Okay, so now what? Do we have a lead on the witches?”</p><p>Dean chimed in, but all I got was all I got was “I killed… house… from… don’t know… demon is.” Sam interpreted what Dean said after I gave them a confused look. Apparently he said, “I killed two of them at the house where we saved you from, but we don’t know where the third witch or the demon is.”</p><p>“Awesome.” I signed and then rubbed my eyes. I felt exhausted. If the last witch in the coven is still with the demon, I’m sure they’ll come after us for killing the other two. It was only a matter of time. I looked up. The boys still had some worry in their faces, even though they tried to hide it.</p><p>“I’m fine. Really.” This didn’t reassure them that much, but they stopped staring at me. “We should expect a visit from the demon and the witch soon if I’ve been out for a while. What’s the plan?” I stood up from the bed and moved towards my bag.</p><p>“Well, we have witch-killing bullets and angel blades.” Dean said, holding up each item. Easy enough to understand.</p><p>We didn’t have to wait long. Not five minutes passed and the motel room door burst open. A demon walked in and forced me and Sam to the back wall. I had the wind knocked out of me and I couldn’t move my arms or hands. I was getting real tired of this shit. Dean popped out from behind the door and stabbed him with an angel blade.</p><p>Sam and I dropped to the floor. Then we saw the girl in the doorway, and all three of us raised our guns. To which she threw her hands up in the air and winced, expecting to be shot, kind of hiding her face behind her raised hands. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the boys didn’t shoot her.</p><p>Dean led her to the chair and sat her down. Sam pulled up the laptop and typed as she spoke so I could read what she was saying instead of a shitty interpretation.</p><p>I read over Sam’s shoulder as the girl talked to me…</p><p>I’m so sorry. I never agreed to any of this. My mom was the leader of our family coven and expected me to join since I would be coming of age soon. I didn’t sell my soul to that demon. When you came into town, my mom panicked and sent my older sister to plant a hex bag in your car. I never wanted any of this. I packed up and left when they kidnapped you. I couldn’t go against my mom, but I couldn’t go along with her either. My mom sent the demon to retrieve me and when we got back, they were both dead. Shot. I assumed you got free and killed them. They were horrible and they deserved it after all they had been doing, but the demon was angry for some reason and demanded that I get revenge that I never asked for. He dragged me to this motel and gave me a spell that would rupture your insides. But I would never have used it. I don’t know what it would have done to me if you hadn’t killed it.</p><p>She pulled the spell out of her pocket and handed it over. She had tears running down her face. I believed her. The boys asked me what I wanted to do since it was my hunt.</p><p>I signed and Sam spoke to her, “We’ll be watching you. No witchy business. We so much as get one sign of something going on and we will find you. Got it?”</p><p>She nodded and then she left.</p><p>“Let’s go home.” I signed before grabbing my bag and my laptop. We left a big tip on the table to replace the damage to the door and then we loaded up and headed out.</p><p>I followed the Impala back to the Bunker in my car, but not before double checking for any other hex bags. Looking back, I still couldn’t remember the memories I lost that night, but at least all three of us were physically okay and the sunrise as we drove towards the Bunker wasn’t too shabby either.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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